Bigger Than Jesus Read online

  The only items of interest in Panama Bob’s desk are: one small baggie of green-brown weed, what appears to be the half-finished manuscript to the novel Bob was always tinkering with in his spare time and the nickel-plated .32 you thought he was going to use to shoot you out on the ledge. Sorry, Bob.

  You call Denny on your cell. “You got the key?”

  “Man, that was a mess.”

  “Yeah, yeah. That mess was almost me. You got the key?”

  “Almost you?” The big bear sounds concerned. “You okay, buddy?”

  “Better than Bob. Denny, if you don’t tell me whether you got the key in the next two seconds, I’m going to throw myself out this fucking window.”

  “Got it. But he was—”

  You don’t need the details. You tell him to get out of the parking garage before the cops come. “Take your Dodge to the pizza joint around the corner and have a slice. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Big Denny’s a mook. He’s so big, he’s fine for security gigs up front in a XXXL tee that’s still too tight around the biceps. He’s the bar bouncer who stops trouble just by showing up. However, in this situation, he’s too hard to miss. He’s not built for hanging around a crime scene.

  Denny has been out of jail for more than two years — aggravated assault, but the other guy deserved it. Considering Denny’s muscles and tattoos, he always looks like a guy on day parole. A sharp cop might think to ask him what he was doing there. Denny could get himself into trouble talking to a cop about the weather. You’re the one who handles the nuance, art and public relations required if anyone in a uniform needs some lies thrown their way.

  It’s a big building. When the cops show up they’ll set up a cordon and question anybody who leaves the building. Time is spiteful and speeding up and your hands are shaking more as you rifle a filing cabinet. Instead of the storage locker receipt, you find porn magazines. Bob really did hate modern technology.

  You don’t have time to go through every book on Bob’s shelves. If Panama Bob had come to you first, it’d be Jimmy drowned in the big fountain in the center of his mansion’s circular driveway and you would have found the goddamn receipt by now. All of Jimmy’s books are fake: all-leather bindings and each of equal height, as if he’s some scrub ambulance chaser in a late-night infomercial begging to be a legal beagle for clients with lung diseases caused by bad insulation.

  If you had Jimmy’s money, you’d know what to do with it. If. You can give yourself an ulcer thinking about If.

  If you were Panama Bob, where would you keep the receipt for the storage locker that holds your fortune? Your eyes settle on a framed picture of Jimmy and Bob on a boat. Panama Bob’s got a big, goofy grin on his face and he’s holding up a small fish. Jimmy stands behind him, toasting the camera with a martini glass. Only Jimmy would think to stock a deep sea fishing boat with olives and toothpicks and only Bob would consider a baby sailfish a prize. You took that picture. You find the safe behind the frame. You hadn’t known Bob had a safe. Maybe he wasn’t so goofy.

  You peek out the window. In the street, a crowd gathers to gawk at the body. There’s no time to get a sledge and hammer that little safe out of the wall.

  You scoop up the phone from the floor and speed dial Jenny, the woman who still thinks she’s Bob’s ex-wife, not his widow. She answers on the third ring. You thought you might just piss yourself waiting through rings one and two.

  “Hallo, Bob. What do you want?”

  “Jenny, it’s Jesus.”

  “Hey, Hay-soose!” She drags out the syllables, just to bust your balls, like that’s original. She does that even when she’s not drunk, which she is now.

  “Jenny, I’ve got some bad news. Bob had a fall.”

  “Yeah? How is he?”

  “Dunno. I haven’t seen him yet. Jimmy wants me to check something in Bob’s office safe. Do you know the number or know where I could find the number?”

  “Nope. I didn’t know he had a safe. Tell him to open it up and pay my alimony. He’s behind by two months. I got bills, too. Tell him that.”

  “Shit.”

  “Anything else, Hay-soose?”

  “What’s Bob’s birthdate? The doctor will want to know for their records.”

  She hems and haws and you resist the urge to start swearing at her. That would make you feel better, but it won’t help. Finally, she says, “April 20, 1970. Hey, is Bob going to be okay?”

  “No. No, he won’t, Jenny. Sorry.” And you really are.

  You hang up and try spinning the dial on the combination lock. Past zero left to four, spin right to twenty, back left to 70.

  When you try the handle on the safe door, it opens with a chunk sound. Bob was an idiot and you’re a genius.

  The safe is empty. You just joined Bob’s Idiot Club.

  Back to the window. There’s a cruiser pulling to a stop with blue and white flashing lights and, even at night, you can tell there are upturned faces and pointing fingers. The police will “secure the scene” first, meaning they’ll tell everybody to step back while they check on the body and dig out some yellow tape to rope off at least as far as the blood spatter. A shift supervisor will show up soon and they’ll form a perimeter. That’s what you would have done when you were an MP.

  Once the perimeter is set up, you’re trapped and trying to talk your way out. You’ve got to look like just another office worker on his way out after a hard day in a cubicle. You grab Bob’s trench coat and umbrella on the way out the door and, after a moment’s thought, you double back and grab his briefcase and sling the strap over your shoulder. In your suit and tie and briefcase, you look like another Joe Jobber. You take the stairs to the lobby.

  You’re almost out the back door when you realize you should have opened up the umbrella at the bottom of the stairs. High up in a corner, a security camera hangs from the lobby wall. Its red light blinks as it catches your movement and turns on, catching your mug perfectly. There’s nothing you can do about that now so you hit the back door. The rain smacks the pavement so hard it bounces back up. Head down and hunching with cold water running down your neck, you open Panama Bob’s umbrella and head for the pizza place.

  Denny’s got his face a couple inches from the table top, chewing the top of a loaded pizza. It’s especially gross because he’s not eating the bread. He takes your look and smiles wide, a dot of tomato sauce on his nose.

  “New diet?”

  “Low-carb. It’s not so bad for you if you just order the works and eat the top but leave the bread.”

  Denny’s last diet was all durian, all the time. Durian is an exotic fruit that smells like garbage. He stuck with that until he got the squirts and shit his pants running after a dealer for The Machine who was putting more up his nose than he was dealing. It’s hard to be taken seriously as an enforcer if you lose bowel control while you’re trying to have a serious conversation, even when you’ve got said deadbeat in a headlock.

  “Is the low-carb thing working?”

  “Down five pounds from three days ago,” Denny says.

  That five pounds must have come out of his feet because he looks just as fat as ever. “Yeah, I think I can see it in your face.”

  Big Denny smiles wider. It’s safer to stay on the happy side of a felon who can crack walnuts with his hands. Denny saw Marlon Brando do that in that movie with Matthew Broderick and dedicated himself to the practice so much he’s got early-onset arthritis.

  When he hands you the key, you take a close look. Besides the number 408, there’s no clue in which storage site Panama Bob’s stolen fortune might be. This is New York. There must be a dozen such places close by. When the economy went south, lots of retail spaces emptied out and a bunch of them were turned into storage facilities. There’s even a TV show about vultures bidding on storage lockers sight unseen so they can salvage the contents for cash. Before the recession, they wouldn’t have all those lockers eligible for plunder.

  “Too bad about Bob,” Denny s
ays. He’s watching you carefully to see if you maybe need a hug.

  “Anybody see you take the key from his neck?”

  Denny nods. “Coupl’a homeless guys, sure.”

  “That’s not so bad.”

  “And some tourists outside the coffee shop across the street from Bob’s.”

  “Great.” Your mouth goes dry so you look for the pizza waitress but she has disappeared. It’s often difficult to get good service when you eat with Denny. He’s too scary for most citizens. “How’d you know they were from out of town?”

  “They stopped to watch after Bob went splat.”

  “Oh.”

  “And they didn’t run away when I showed up. They just stood there with their mouths hanging open. Fucking tourists.”

  The red sauce is spread across his lantern jaw and his cheeks. It’s like eating with a little kid, which, to you? Big Denny De Molina will always be a little kid.

  “Congratulations,” you say. “You just confirmed every stereotype the flyover states have about New York City.”

  Denny shrugs. “Gave ’em a story they’ll repeat for generations.” He tries to mimic a woman’s voice and instead sounds like Miss Piggy. “This one time? My grandfather was in New York? You know…like dat.”

  He offers you a slice he’s torn off. He surely hasn’t washed his hands since he took the key from Bob’s broken neck. It doesn’t matter if it’s fresh dead guy. He should have washed his hands before digging into pizza. Your stomach turns upside down and you thank him but shake your head.

  “So will the cops think old Bob committed suicide? Jimmy wanted it to look like a suicide.”

  The desk drawers are spread everywhere. The safe door is hanging open. “Maybe,” you say. “Or maybe they’ll think it was a robbery. Hard to say.”

  “You gonna tell me what the key’s about?”

  You thought about this on the walk over so your next lie is already in the chamber, ready to fire. “There’s a storage locker somewhere. I don’t know where, but Bob tried to get me to let him go with the stuff in the storage locker.” You lean in close, whispering even though no one else is in the place. “Bob had pictures of Jimmy’s wife!”

  Denny’s forehead furrows. This is a total fabrication this time, but there’s precedent for it. “Babs? No way!”

  “Solid.”

  Denny startles and jumps and does a double-take like he’s mugging in a silent movie. You get a sick look at Denny’s gold tooth and the red ball of mush and pineapple in his maw.

  His eyes narrow. “I thought she was past her younger, wilder days, man. Jimmy and her went through couple’s counselling and everything. Jimmy screws around. That’s expected, a man in his position. Lotsa business trips and whatnot. But Babs? I don’t see that in her anymore. Especially not after what happened to the last guy.”

  “You never told me about the last guy.”

  “Long story, long time ago, before you came on the crew. Some things you don’t want to know and I can’t tell you since I don’t get that drunk and sad anymore. It was one of those Pulp Fiction-type foot massage situations. The guy…old flame. Long before Jimmy. One time only thing. But he’s still a missing person’s case, you know what I mean? Jimmy walks in on them, in flagrante delicious pussy. Next thing you know, the guy’s begging to get to be a missing person. You get me? If Babs was screwing around, she’d be…you know…discreet now. Really. Jesus. Brother. Dawg! Really! Who’d be that stupid as to sleep with Jimmy Lima’s wife?”

  You didn’t think you’d get this much resistance from Big Denny. You improvise. “Barbara is still a good-looking woman. Total MILF material. I’m guessing it’s Jimmy’s computer tech guy. Freejack Jack lives in the guest house so he’s there all the time and Barbara is out by the pool sunning herself. Next thing you know? Porn movie.”

  “Nah. Freejack’s got no balls.”

  “What about the personal trainer guy who comes around the house for those private hot yoga lessons?”

  “Chad?” He shakes his head. “Gay.”

  “Yeah, but maybe he’s the kind of gay that’s flexible about it. Any port in a storm, you know. Jimmy’s wife could turn on the Pope.”

  Denny’s eyebrows furrow and he looks twice as scary. “This is…terrible news.”

  “We gotta find that storage place, man. And zip it until we know what’s going on, for sure. Jimmy’s not going to like this. We don’t want him going off half-cocked and shooting Barbara in the face.”

  “No. We don’t want that,” Denny says. “What we going to do when we find those pictures?”

  You shrug. “Once we know who we’re dealing with, then we go to Jimmy with it. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe Bob was just blowing smoke so I wouldn’t toss him off the building.”

  “Maybe.” Denny brightens and returns to his pizza. “You really threw Jimmy’s brother off the building, huh?”

  “Well, it wasn’t like Kevin Costner doing the bad Elliot Ness thing, throwing the guy off the rooftop in The Untouchables.”

  “How was it like?”

  “Sort of like being Kevin Costner, only I almost crapped my pants and I had no hate for Panama Bob. It was just a thing I had to do, you know?”

  “I know.” Denny stretches out a paw and pats your hand. “Sorry, Jesus. I shoulda gone up myself. You know how you are with heights.”

  You went on the Ferris wheel at Coney Island once and almost threw up while waiting in line, but since you were on a date with Lily, you held it down and she thought you loved the Ferris wheel.

  You reach inside the trench coat and your fingers close around a thick leather wallet. “I think I’ve had enough excitement for one night. Your dinner is on Panama Bob tonight, may he rest in peace.”

  “Pieces. Jimmy is okay with killing his own brother while the big boss is in the hospital? What you think he’ll do to whoever’s screwing Barbara?”

  “Slow death. Vice grips and fire might be involved. Bad karma all around.” You open the wallet and there’s a bunch of the usual cards. You slip out the bills, a fifty and twenties and tens and count it out under the table. There’s just over three-hundred dollars in your hands. You tell Denny it’s about two-hundred bucks and give him half that before slipping the rest in your pants pocket.

  While Denny trudges off to the bathroom to wash his face, you take inventory of Bob’s wallet. There’s a slip of paper with Chinese characters on it that’s obviously from a fortune cookie. The English side reads: “You will be a great and persuasive writer.”

  You pull out a bent business card for a hair salon The Machine owns and a business card for Chad, Barbara’s personal trainer. It’s got a telephone number on it written in ink and “Chad” is written out in childlike, block letters. You hope Denny can keep his mouth shut so nothing bad comes Chad’s way. He’s not much more than a kid and, with that lisp and those lycra shorts, it’s obvious that any violence that went his way would be unfair, collateral damage. You just need time to figure out which storage business is the right one so you and Lily can get away from this life and start a new one that doesn’t require you to chase anybody out on high ledges in the rain.

  Another business card catches your eye and this one’s a surprise. The card advertises a jazz spot called Thackeray’s Horn Club. On the back, in loopy, girly letters, someone had written “Melba.” A telephone number with a prefix for cell phones sat cramped beneath the name. Whoever Melba was, she’d left a thick greasy lipstick kiss, now smeared, but no less visible in bright, do-me-quick red. Poor Panama Bob. He had hidden depths and lived fast until the pavement stopped him short. You plan to feel really bad for him later. Push that thought away and save the grief for later.

  Denny punches you in the shoulder gently. “Jimmy called me while I was in the can. He says he wants a meet, right away, do not pass go.”

  You tell Denny you want to swing by your apartment first.

  Denny shakes his huge head. “No time. When the Underboss calls, gotta go.”


  You want to ditch the key so it’s not on you when you see Jimmy. You can talk in circles, but Denny’s a straight line kind of guy and could blurt out something to make Jimmy suspicious. You trust Denny with your life, but not with a secret or to tell a solid lie.

  Denny’s like a brother. You almost want to tell him, “Sorry, man. No one’s doing Jimmy’s wife. I just told you that so I could keep all of Panama Bob’s skim to myself.” Almost. But half of a fortune might not be enough to get far away for a long time before The Machine finds you. Sure, Denny’s like a brother, but Lily is the one, plus she sleeps with you. No contest.

  You tell Denny you’re still sick from the vertigo as you run to the bathroom. You pretend to throw up. Making lots of noise, you stand on the john and hide the key above a ceiling tile. You give it a few more minutes of theatrics before you come out wiping your mouth with your handkerchief.

  The pizza girl is back behind the counter, looking worried about what she might have to clean up in the men’s room. You ask for an extra-large decaf to go, “just to get the taste out of my mouth.”

  Then Big Denny’s driving you to Jimmy’s house and you’re thinking that this is going to get deeper and darker before you see the light.

  But if it all works out, you can get out of The Machine. Belonging to Lily would be different than being owned by Jimmy. Lily is the most gorgeous Latina in all of New York. Her love is the kind of slavery any man would choose gladly.

  LOVE & NOOKIE

  You know you’re in trouble when Denny doesn’t want to talk baseball. He’s a Yankees fan and the easiest way to wind him up is to talk about the Mets. “Santana’s going to be healthy in time for spring training. D’jou hear that?”

  Big Denny shrugs.

  Uh-oh.

  The java is bitter and burns your tongue. You put the steaming coffee in the cup holder to let it cool. The meeting with Jimmy could go south in all kinds of ways. What does Jimmy want with you tonight? Bob’s dead. Jimmy shouldn’t want to be within 100 miles of you. He should be sending you to Atlantic City to let the heat ease. Your stomach feels like you swallowed an ice cube. What if the big boss, Vincent, is awake? He just had the prostate surgery today, but that old son of a bitch is tough. Maybe he’s up and making decisions again from his hospital bed. Could Vincent suspect that Jimmy gave you the contract to take out Bob?